The Moon 3

"After a while I stopped talking.


Drieka put her hand in mine.


"Oh, Schalk," she whispered, and the moon and that misty look were in her blue eyes. "Do tell me some more."


I shook my head.


"I am sorry, Drieka," I answered, "I don't know any more."


"But you must, Schalk," she said very softly. "Talk to me about - about other things."


I thought steadily for some moments.


"Yes Drieka," I said at length, "I have remembered something. There is one more thing I haven't told you about blue-tongue in sheep..."


"No, no, not that," she interrupted, "talk to me about other things. About the moon,say."


So I told her the two things Braam Venter had said once about the moon. I told her the green flower one and the other one.


"Braam Venter knows lots more things like that about the moon," I explained, " you'll see him next time you go to Zeerust for the*nagmaal. He is a short fellow with a bump on his head where he fell..."


"Oh, no, Schalk," Drieka said again, shaking her head, so that a wisp of her fair head brushed against my face, "I don't want to know about Braam Venter. Only about you. You think out something on your own about the moon and tell it to me."


I understood what she meant.


"Well, Drieka," I said thoughtfully. "The moon - the moon is alright."


"Oh Schalk!" Drieka cried. "That's much finer than anything Braam Venter could ever say - even with that bump on his head."


Of Course I told her it was nothing and I could perhaps say something even better if I tried. But I was very proud, all the same. And somehow it seemed that my words brought us close together. I felt that a handful of words, spoken under the full moon, had made a new and witch thing come into the life of Drieka and me."


Excerpt from the short story; Drieka and the moon,by Herman Charles Bosman.

*nagmaal, holy communion in the Dutch Reformed Church.

Nagmaal used to be held once every three months, Good Friday and old years eve, in the rural districts of South Africa, in the past when travel was difficult. This was a huge social occasion when people would trek from miles around to town in their ox-wagons. A camp would spring up around the church and people would renew old friendships and even old feuds. Young people would find romance, new members would be confirmed into the church, marriages formalised, sometimes just in time, and babies christened.

Nagmaal camp arround the Dutch Reformed Church in Lichtenburg, Western Transvaal, now North West Province, early 1900's. The church was usually the first building erected in most South African towns, the town then grew around the church.

The Moon 2.

I've been reading some more of the South African short story writer Herman Charles Bosman, thought I'd share this extract with you.

"When I saw Drieka that night she was leaning against a thorn-tree beside the road where it goes down to the *drift. But I didn't recognise her at first. All I saw was a figure dressed in white with long hair hanging down loose over it's shoulders. It seemed very unusual that a figure should be there at such a time of night. I remembered certain stories I had heard about white ghosts. I also remembered that a few miles back I had seen a boulder lying in the middle of the road. It was a fair-sized boulder and it might be dangerous for passing mule carts. So I decided to turn back at once and move it out of the way.


I decided very quickly about the boulder. And I made up my mind so firmly that the saddle-girth broke from the sudden way in which I jerked my horse back on it's haunches. Then the figure came forward and spoke, and I saw it was Drieka Breytenbach.


"Good evening," I said in answer to her greeting, "I was just going back because I remembered something."


"About chosts?" she asked.


"No," I replied truthfully, about a stone in the road."


Drieka laughed at that. So I laughed too. And the Dreika laughed again. And then I laughed. In fact we did quite a lot of laughing between us. I got off my horse and stood beside Drieka in the moonlight. And if somebody had come along at that moment and said that the *predikants mule-cart had been capsized by the boulder in the road I would have laughed some more.


That is the sort of thing the moon in the Marico does to you when it's full.


I didn't think of asking Drieka how she came to be there, or why her hair was hanging down loose, or who it was that she had been waiting for under the thorn-tree. It was enough that the moon was there, big and yellow over the veld, and that the wind blew softly through the trees and across the grass and against Dreika's white dress and against the mad singing of the stars."


From the short story, "Drieka and the moon".


*drift, a river crossing, ford.
*predikant, minister of the Dutch Reformed Church.

See my previous post The Moon, Concentration camp.

I will have to write more of this story as it has a surprising twist in the tail.

Winter

Winter is really making itself felt here, well maybe some of you might not call it winter. Last night the temperature dropped to 10 degrees Celsius, after reaching a high of 18, with a cold south wind blowing. This morning started of cold but warmed to about 20 degrees C. At the moment it's overcast and looks as if it's going to rain.


Sunday was a bright sunny day with a very cold south wind blowing. In the winter the whole weather pattern shifts north, which means that the Antarctic's  weather  move north to, closer to us.

Coming home from church on Sunday I took this photo of the Drakensberg shrouded in cloud. Tried to use the zoom on my cell phone, obviously didn't work too well. 

Shot of the Berg just a bit further north.

My three small dogs, Thombi, Lady and Sissie, seeking the sun against the north wall of the cottage. My landlord says he's going to paint this wall soon, (he's been saying that for about three years now).


Looks as if we will have snow soon on the Berg. If you're a trout fisherman yo pray for lots of snow on the Berg. Lots of snow means good stream levels in the spring and good fishing. Our snow does not all melt at once in the spring but continuously during the winter, so you don't get excessive run off in spring making streams un-fish able. 

Estcourt: Photo essay

Took some photos of the town I work in and live close to.

Sunrise of the African veld.

Sunrise through the trees around my cottage.

 Residential street, Wagen rd, with pin oaks down the centre.

A street leading off from Wagen rd. In the back ground a koppie (small hill) with grass and thorn trees.

A home bathed in the early morning sunrise.

 The old civic building, built somewhere between 1900 and 1920.

Town hall.

The reason we don't have to stop and smell the coffee; Nestle coffee factory about 200 meters from the town hall.

Harding street (Main street Estcourt)

Albert street, named after one of Queen Victoria's sons I think. Only person on the street is the street sweeper opposite, 8:30 Sunday morning.

Town library, corner of Connor and Victoria streets. Victoria street named after Queen Victoria. Natal is known as the last outpost of the British Empire.

 Welsh road lined with Syringa trees, covered with purple flowers in the spring. Most of the roads in this area are named after local men who fought and died in the two world wars. Lots of roads, lots of men who died.

The church I worship at, Estcourt Community Church. We fall under the Baptist Union of South Africa, but we consider ourselves non-denominational. You don't have to be a Baptist to belong.

Our church hall and Sunday school, used to be the old church.

This building just opposite the church houses the Thembalihle Care Project, an outreach of the church. Through it we support 85 AIDS orphans. These orphans are supplied with food every month, clothing, school fees and money for transport to school. The project helps them to source the various Government grants available, then another orphan takes there place. There are 79,000 child headed households in South Africa as a result of AIDS.

This building also contains a soup kitchen and produces about 4,000 meals a month. These feed poor pre school children and AIDS patients. Cost per annum R3 million. Any one interest in finding out more about this project can contact Trevor Dahl at tcpecc@telkomsa.net

The worship team practising before the service, Henny on Base guitar, his wife Katrien on guitar, Roy (the Leader of the band) and Ange just peeping out above the piano. We have a very multiracial congregation. Now you've spent a Sunday morning in Estcourt, even been to church with me.

Slavery 2

In my last post I wrote about the Atlantic slave trade, this post is about the Indian ocean slave trade. But first some correction. The slave ship shown in the last post was the slave bark Wildfire and the picture dated 1786. The iron bracelet like items, shown in the picture below the cowrie shells, were called ManilaOkhapos. Where the name originated, or what it means I have been unable to discover. Metal of any kind was much sought after in Africa. The metal could be worked into agricultural implements and into weapons.

Until the Portuguese sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in the 15th century, the Indian ocean was very much an Arab pond. Arab dhows carried all of the trade to all points between Arabia, India and Africa. Within a couple of years the Portuguese completely destroyed this monopoly. Arabs started trading with East Africa from about the 8th century, and established settlements on the coast from the Horn of Africa to as far south as Mozambique. This trade included gold, ivory and slaves.

The Islamic trade in slaves across the Indian ocean is not much heard of, or discussed, or taught in schools. In South African school history books it is described as being almost benign.

 David Livingstone describes it in a totally different way:
"To overdraw it's evils is a simple impossibility... We passed a  slave woman shot or stabbed through the body lying in the path. [Onlookers] said an Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead.... We came upon a man dead from starvation... The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken heartedness. It attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves."

David Livingstone, missionary explorer.

David Livingstone is still revered in Africa to this day for his efforts to put an end to the slave trade. In countries like Zambia and Malawi many men bear the names, David or Livingstone.


Between 11 and 18 million people were carried away to Arabia and other points east as slaves. Livingstone estimated that about 80,000 a year died on the way to the coast. How many thousands died each year in raids on tribes to capture slaves will never be known. The situation in the Atlantic slave trade must have been similar.

Slaves faced a long journey from inland to  Kilwa and Bagamoyo on the coast, often several hundred kilometres. Slaves were shackled together with long chains by the ankles, these were never removed during the journey. They were also yoked together with forked branches by the neck. The Ivory trade and slave trade went hand in hand. Slaves were forced to carry elephant tusks, if a mother got too weak to carry the tusk assigned to her, and her baby, the baby was killed or just abandoned. The route to the coast was littered with corpses. Islam forbids the ill treatment of slaves, but as with most people religion did not count for much when there was money to be made.

Once at one of the ports mentioned above they were loaded onto dhows of about 30 to 35 meters long,that's about 100 to 120 feet. Two hundred to six hundred of them were packed into one dhow They were packed below decks on bamboo shelves with about one meter head room. It was impossible, to kneel, sit or squat. It took the slaves about a week after landing to straighten their legs again. They were fed very little and given very little water on the trip to Zanzibar which took several days. Import duty was paid on all slaves landed at Zanzibar, so slaves that were thought to be too weak or to sick to survive were simply thrown over board.

Zanzibar and Pemba islands were the centre of this slave trade and controlled by Omani Arabs until the Royal Navy put them out of business in the mid 19th century. Slaves were still loaded on dhows in Portuguese territory, where officials turned a blind eye, until very late in the 19th century. Arab slave trade continued from 650 to 1960, in one form or another. Slavery was only formerly abolished in Zanzibar in 1970.

This photo taken in the 1880's of slaves and slave traders on an Arab dhow.

Our school history book goes on to say that once a slave was purchased in Arabia, Persia, or where ever, they became part of the slave owners family. In a way this was true, the young women were put in his harem, the old women worked in the kitchen, but all the men were castrated. You won't find African Arabs anywhere in Arab countries, as you will find African Americans in the US.

The monument to slaves in Zanzibar. The monument depicts the dungeons slaves were kept in prior to being put on a dhow. One entrance and exit, impossible to escape from. The slaves standing separately symbolises a family broken up.

Detail of the monument, daughter and son sold as slaves.

Anglican church built on the site of the old slave market in Zanzibar. Freed slaves were used as workers during the building of the church.

Stained glass window in the church depicting the physical and spiritual salvation of the slaves.

Tombstone of a British sailor who drowned when he fell over board while his ship was chasing a dhow suspected of carrying slaves.

Slavery continues to this day, now known as human trafficking. This trafficking is usually for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Every now and again in South Africa you hear of the police raiding an illegal brothel where young women from the Far East or Eastern Europe were being held against their will.

The Christian revival in England as lead by John Wesley and revivals in America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries caused a backlash against slavery. How could any man be made a slave when all men were equal before God. The evil of it became more and more apparent. Men like William Wilberforce dedicated their lives to the abolition of slavery.

By the way there are no legal brothels in SA, though so called "men's clubs" here are nothing but brothels in disguise. The liberal humanists in SA want prostitution and brothels legalised They say it's to protect prostitutes from exploitation. (??)

Slavery

On Thursday afternoon I was asked to supervise on of the grade seven classes. Their teacher had to attend a subject meeting at another school. While I was sitting at her desk and the learners were doing the work set for the I paged through a social science text book and came across the part covering slavery. This started me thinking on it's origins and effects on the enslaved and those who were slavers and slave holders.

Slavery is as old as mankind. You read about it in the Bible, the Israelites were slaves for 400 years in Egypt. in  all the ancient empires slavery was considered normal. Slavery was common medieval Europe, the Catholic church often issued edicts against this slavery. Christian Sweden and Russia thought nothing of selling fellow Christians, captured in war, to Islamic counties. But the slavery that has horrified the world and captured the imagination like no other has been the African slave trade.

The Atlantic slave trade is the one that we hear the most about because it included Europe and the Americas.  In 1452 Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bul Dum Diversas,  granting Alfonso V of Portugal the right to reduce any "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers to hereditary slavery." 


Trans Saharan slavery had been carried on by Islamic traders from North Africa for centuries before the Portuguese  arrived on the scene. Caravans of slaves from west Africa travelled across the Sahara every year. By 1480 the Portuguese had established slave trading forts along the coast of the bight of Benin and Biafra, and had replaced the Arabs as the main slave traders. The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola in 1501, the first of millions to be transported across the Atlantic.

No one knows exactly how many were transported across the Atlantic, but a figure I read once was at least 13 million, how many millions died during this transportation is unknown.  At least a third of the slaves loaded on the ships were expected to die. Conditions on these ships were beyond description. Slave were chained together and packed in literally like sardines. They were packed on shelves and could not sit up. Toilet facilities were non-existent, and the food bad. Many slaves just died of heartbreak

The effect on the slaves was unimaginable hardship and suffering that lasted for centuries. Slave holders became less than human. Such absolute control of over other human beings had a corrupting influence on the slave holders.

Slave tied together and marched through the African bush. Forked branches were tied to the necks of the slaves as can be seen in the picture above.

 Cowrie shells were often used as payment for slaves.

Another form of payment.

The Atlantic slave trade took place in what was called the Atlantic triangle. Ships transported slave across the Atlantic to the Americas. Raw materials, produced by the slaves, were transported from the Americas to Europe. From Europe finished goods were transported to west Africa to buy more slaves. Most payment for slaves was in the form of muskets of very poor quality, and industrial quality alcohol. At the peak of the slave trade, the value of this trade was 3.5 million pounds sterling a year!

Slaves on a slave ship, early 1800's.

In South Africa the first slaves arrived in 1658, six years after the establishment of the Cape. The settlement at the Cape was only established in 1652 as a refreshment station for ships of the Dutch East India Company. A special law was passed by the directors of the company that local people may not be enslaved. Slaves came East Africa and Madagascar. The king of slave were considered to be the Malay slaves brought from the East. These slaves had special skills such as cabinet making, building, leather and metal work. Their work can still be seen in the Cape today, especially in the Cape Dutch buildings of the period.

In 1685 a law was passed allowing male slaves to purchase their freedom at the age of 25, female slaves were allowed to buy their freedom at 22. The provision was that they had to have been baptised, confirmed and accepted into the Dutch Reformed church. Due to the shortage of white women in the Cape many men married slave women. Women from India and the Dutch East Indies, today Indonesia, were preferred due to their cooking and home making skills. Thus most people with Afrikaans surname, like yours truly, have black ancestry .  This fact was virtually unknown until the 1970's when a professor from one of the universities started to do research into the founding mothers of Afrikaans families. During the 1970's apartheid era this discovery caused a furor  and people wanted to lynch the professor for daring to question the purity of our European bloodline.

Most slaves in the Cape were treated as badly as slaves any where else in the world and mortality was high. Slave number only increased due to the importation of more slaves. Skilled slave were considered a valuable economic asset, unskilled slave were just used up. There were exceptions. While I was studying at Stellenbosch University, our history group went on a tour of historic wine farms, (more to drink wine than anything else I think). On one of these farms which had been in the same family since the 17th century, they showed us the family grave yard. In the middle of the grave yard was a double grave covered with a slab of marble. The inscription on the slab read in Dutch, " Here lie our beloved slaves, (with names and dates of their passing." ) This was obviously a married couple who had served the family loyally for many years.

Slaves in the Cape were freed by a law passed by the British parliament in 1835, freeing all slaves in the British Empire. The Cape had become a British colony in 1805. This proclamation of the freedom of slaves is celebrated to this day by the descendants of slaves on a day known as the second new year in January.

In my next post I'll say something about the Indian ocean slave trade.

Kamberg, farming

Some thoughts on farming in SA.

View across some farmland to the Drakensberg in the background.

Intensively cultivated farmland, with stands of timber on the horizon.

More intensive farming, grasslands in the foreground. No farmer may plough virgin grassland that has never been ploughed before without permission and an environmental impact study. This is to protect grassland fauna and flora.

Three farm dams stretching down a side valley of the Kamberg valley. Every little valley here has three or more dams. South African farmers have been great dam builders in the past. In a dry country like ours you need to save as much water as possible. South Africa's average rainfall is 500mm, (about 20 inches) compared to 850mm in most of the rest of the world. Today you may not build a dam on your property with authorization and an environmental impact study. Dams were often built on wetlands which destroyed the habitat on which so many species depend.

A large dam on a farm in the Kamberg valley. As I said in a previous post in SA the word dam includes the water behind the dam wall. Dairy cattle grazing on irrigated pasture, with water used from this dam. See the pump house below the dam wall.

Another view of the same farm, with the Kamberg in the distance.

Since 1991 the number of commercial farmers in SA has decreased from 120,000 to less than 40,000 today. Due to ever increasing costs it takes large scale farming to make a profit. Fuel, fertilizer, tractors and implements have become very expensive, The number of farm labourers has also decreased drastically adding to our already large numbers of unemployed people. Farmers in SA receive no subsidies or other help from the Government.

South African farmers are highly productive. Our soils are shallow and poor and our rainfall very unpredictable, yet farmers are able to produce enough to feed a growing population at a reasonable price. South Africa also exports huge amounts of fruit, meat, maize, wool and other products overseas adding to our export earnings.

Many SA farmers have sought greener pastures in countries to our north. Mozambique, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the DRC, SAAGRI, the SA farmer organization has acquired the lease on millions of hectares of land. Even countries as far afield as Sudan has SA farmers. In spite of the fertility of these countries, they produce very little agriculturally. A country like Nigeria, which has a high rainfall and very fertile soil, imports most of it's food. Some of these governments offer almost free land and all sorts of tax incentives to farmers who wish to settle and farm there.

Some say that we will end up importing most of our food from our northern neighbours if the trend continues.